My home CCTV setup is nearly complete! NOW WITH PICS!

[Media 0]

that sucks man..u need to blast the front with some IR there or put up a motion sensor light would be the best

[Madmak 0]

They are day/night cameras now, this one was installed just days before it was stolen. The PTZs were aimed in different directions - Murphy's Law.

[alpine0000 0]

sorry about the truck.

 

incredible setup, excellent job!

[slowforthecones 0]

hi madmak, nice video. i first saw your video on the ridgeline owners club. glad you got your truck back and next time make sure you dont have the valet key left inside the truck!

[Scruit 0]

Before I begin, I'm not a CCTV expert - just a home user, so this comes with zero industry experience....

 

But...

 

Doesn't seem like any of those 16 cameras are close enough to identify a person.

 

Every entrance to my house has a camera right next to it so I get closeup face shots of everyone who approaches those doors. inside and out. My first reaction to seeing the 16-way monitor (other that "Hey, there's someone taking a picture of his monitor on channel 16... wait..") was "If someone breaks into his house all he's gonna get are pictures of some unidentifiable blobs ransacking his house.

 

 

Like this:

 

Some random group of kids (who went on to break into a house 2 doors down from me, but never got any closer to my house than this). This allows me to tell that there were people there but is useless for identification.

 

 

This is close, but still a useless blob instead of an identifiable person

 

Almost there:

 

 

Now we're talking.

 

 

 

 

I always dedicate each camera to asking one of the following questions;

"Is there someone there?"

 

"What are they doing?"

 

"Who is it?"

 

 

This camera was very picky. It had to be close enough that the door took up the whole shot - otherwise the open door would allow too much light in and cause the door to be washed out and the background to be too dark, resulting in a useless silhouette of a person. By moving the camera 18" closer to the door the lighting is much more consistent throughout the picture and therefore I get a better shot of the person. This kind of shot is what I call the "Wanted Poster" shot. This is, to me, the aim of CCTV evidence when it comes to tracking someone down (the only thing better than this would be the license plate shot)

 

(Next project - polarizing lens makes the glass go away!)

 

Again, I'm not an expert, but I've been fiddling with the 16 cameras at my house for about 6 years now. For your Ridgeline I'd probably be thinking about a motion light and a camera zoomed right up to the driver's door.

[Madmak 0]

You should review the images a little closer and you will see that nearly half of them are relative close up shots and half are overview shots. The PTZs outside are not intended to identify someone a half a block away. They do, however, have several presets each triggered by gates, doors, security system, etc that turn them in to identification shots when needed. To cover what I want to see with close up images would take 200 cameras and thats not feasible.

Your truck window shot would make sense if I parked my truck in the same spot every day and within inches each time, but what about the stuff stolen out of my box? or when the other side gets keyed? Don't forget about Murphy?!? I ususally just park in the garage.

The camera that caught the theft was not a day/night version, it was temporary and has now been changed. All outdoor cameras are now day/night.

I've designed hundreds of CCTV systems and the only thing consistent with them all is that there is no such thing as too many cameras. I just finished a large casino with 250+ cameras and stuff still gets stolen and people still cheat every day.

Hind-sight is always 20/20. Or should it now be HD, or BluRay, or Megapixel???

[Scruit 0]

No offense intended. Like I said, I'm not an expert.

 

The truck window shot is of cars approaching the house - something only possible with a long driveway and a good choke point. I never park outside.

 

If some of those cameras are PTZ that zoom to present on alarm signals then great - I can't tell that from the image though. You didn't appear to have any cams as close and some of mine. And for each camera that is super-close there's another providing and overall shot of the same area.

 

 

The one constant in every case that I have deal with using my camera systems is the action always happens almost (of not completely off-camera.) It usually is a failure on my part to adequately predict where the action will happen. I point a camera at where I think the action will be and then someone does something completely unexpected and catches me with the cameras pointing the wrong way.

 

 

Example:

 

Absolutely: No such thing as too many cameras.